es who had just creaked past them
and whom he would even have articulately greeted if they hadn't rather
chilled the impulse; so that all he could do was--by way of doing
something--to say "Merci, Francois!" out quite loud when his fish was
brought. Everything was there that he wanted, everything that could
make the moment an occasion, that would do beautifully--everything but
what Waymarsh might give. The little waxed salle-a-manger was sallow
and sociable; Francois, dancing over it, all smiles, was a man and a
brother; the high-shouldered patronne, with her high-held, much-rubbed
hands, seemed always assenting exuberantly to something unsaid; the
Paris evening in short was, for Strether, in the very taste of the
soup, in the goodness, as he was innocently pleased to think it, of the
wine, in the pleasant coarse texture of the napkin and the crunch of
the thick-crusted bread. These all were things congruous with his
confession, and his confession was that he HAD--it would come out
properly just there if Waymarsh would only take it properly--agreed to
breakfast out, at twelve literally, the next day. He didn't quite know
where; the delicacy of the case came straight up in the remembrance of
his new friend's "We'll see; I'll take you somewhere!"--for it had
required little more than that, after all, to let him right in. He was
affected after a minute, face to face with his actual comrade, by the
impulse to overcolour. There had already been things in respect to
which he knew himself tempted by this perversity. If Waymarsh thought
them bad he should at least have his reason for his discomfort; so
Strether showed them as worse. Still, he was now, in his way,
sincerely perplexed.

Chad had been absent from the Boulevard Malesherbes--was absent from
Paris altogether; he had learned that from the concierge, but had
nevertheless gone up, and gone up--there were no two ways about
it--from an uncontrollable, a really, if one would, depraved curiosity.
The concierge had mentioned to him that a friend of the tenant of the
troisieme was for the time in possession; and this had been Strether's
pretext for a further enquiry, an experiment carried on, under Chad's
roof, without his knowledge. "I found his friend in fact there keeping
the place warm, as he called it, for him; Chad himself being, as
appears, in the south. He went a month ago to Cannes and though his
return begins to be looked for it can't be for some days. I mi